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A Mega Farm’s Financial Fall Is Sending Shockwaves Across the Prairies

Monette Farms was seen as the future of agriculture. Now it owes $1 billion

Darrel Monette was in his early thirties when, after around a decade selling farm equipment, he took over his family farm near Swift Current, Saskatchewan, in 2013. A graduate of agricultural economics from the University of Saskatchewan, he quickly expanded an initial 25,000 acres of farmland by buying and renting land across Canada and the United States. At its peak, Monette was overseeing grain production on 492,000 acres and held 1.2 million acres of cattle grazing leases—a total area slightly larger than Prince Edward Island. It became one of the largest owner-operator grain farms in North America.

To operate at that scale, Monette Farms held $1.2 billion in assets, which, besides the land, included cattle feedlots, seed processing facilities, 1,700 pieces of farm equipment, an airplane, and a winery. For many, Monette’s progression heralded the future of agriculture, unifying mechanical efficiency and avaricious growth under the banner of his informal company motto, “get shit done.”

Monette appears to be media shy (he did not respond to requests for comment for this article), but in late 2024, he made an appearance on The Truth About Ag, a podcast co-hosted by Kristjan Hebert and Evan Shout, to elucidate his success. “You look at the past two decades, and we’ve just had a great run,” he said. “The appreciation of land, low interest rates, all of that, has enabled my personal wealth—our farm’s personal wealth—to continue to grow.”

Last April, however, just a year and a half after that optimistic interview, Monette Farms entered creditor protection with nearly $1 billion owing. The farm’s insolvency sent shockwaves within agriculture sectors across the Canadian prairies, casting light on an industry increasingly built on economic wagers and the farmers who make them.

Farmland has long been viewed as both a productive asset for farmers and a store of generational capital. A farmer can make money from the crops or livestock produced on a piece of land, but the land itself can also appreciate in value, sometimes far beyond what its agricultural income would seem to justify. According to Farm Credit Canada, Canadian farmland values have increased dramatically over the last twenty years, and the disparity between what farmers earn from their land and the land’s market value has reached a twenty-five-year high. As a result, farmland’s greatest appeal can be as leverage for debt financing.

The more valuable the land on a balance sheet, the more collateral a farmer can offer a lender—and the more money that can potentially be borrowed against it. As long as land values remain high, that arrangement can still sustain further borrowing and expansion, the farm growing by feeding on the value of itself. Monette was using his land and assets in just such a way, leveraging them against a $950 million credit facility from a syndicate of Canadian banks. “It’s one hundred percent leverage, and it is banks,” he explained on The Truth About Ag. “I guess that’s Economics 101 for me.”

Even as Monette grew his land base, diversified his operation, and increased its overall revenue, signs were already emerging to indicate his great run was headed for trouble. Net profits were falling from a peak of $83 million in 2022, down to $37 million in 2024 and $31 million in 2025. A good hunk of change but hardly enough to keep the lenders at bay. In April, with $1.08 billion in liabilities, including $829.5 million owed to the banking syndicate, Monette filed for creditor protection, allowing the company to restructure operations and raise cash. At the same time, the farm’s hundreds of thousands of acres went onto the market, the impact of which upon other land values remains to be seen.

Bad weather and commodity markets can explain some farm losses, but Monette’s decline has largely been understood........

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